what i did today

Alrighty, folks.  In 10 little days, I’ll be done with my twenties and it’s the big ‘ol 30th birthday.  Ten days left to say goodbye to my twenties.  So I’m going to take a look back and for each of the last ten days, post on a favorite memory for each of the last ten years.

A lot has happened since 10 years ago today when I was 20 and that’s where we’ll start.  I was in between sophomore and junior year in college and about 3 weeks away from our wedding.  Only 19.  I really didn’t realize how young I was.  I still remember someone saying, “You’re very young..you understand this is forever?”  Of course! I said thinking she was mighty crazy and I knew what I was doing.  Plus I was going to be 20 when I got married for goodness sakes.  That day 10 years ago seems like forever ago.  I’ll have to post more on that on our anniversary coming up but for now I’ll say the day was great.

I woke up in my little twin bed in my room for the last time.  I remember being so relaxed as I knew people were busy preparing for the day.  The wedding was pretty big.  We had seven bridesmaids, seven ushers, a flower girl, roses, candlebras, a horse and carriage, bubbles, about 200 guests (I think..my old mind can’t remember)..everything that made up my dream wedding.  It went off without a hitch unless you count Scott saying “all my wordly needs I thee endow” instead of “all my worldly goods I thee endow.” I still think I’m paying for that one.

We had a nice reception in our FLC at church and then headed off for a week in Florida, stopping at a bed and breakfast for our first night together.  And let’s just emphasize again here how young, clueless and inexperienced I was.  So yeah, moving on.  I guess it’s pretty typical to pick the wedding as my favorite moment of the year but really, it was the quintessential moment of my twenties.

And I couldn’t do a post like this without pictures (and sorry this is before the big digital photo thing so I had to take snapshots from our album)…

So Mr. Balance Board of my Wii Fit world and I continue a rocky relationship.

Yesterday I did not work out and his first words to me today were, “Too busy to work out yesterday, eh?”  No, but what’s it to ya??

THEN, he says, “Scott’s birthday is coming up.  Have you bought him a present yet, maybe planned a suprise party?”  Note to self…get Scott a birthday present.

And to cap it off, after he measured my weight and congratulated me for losing a 1lb, he proceeded to say, “Well, just so you know, your last weigh-in was at 9:36 pm and a person tends to fluctuate about 2 lbs every day.”  Well, thanks for nothing, then.

Yeah, Mr. Balance Board and I are still trying to work this thing out.  So far it’s not looking good.

As it stands, we’re going to send Emma to our public school here.  There is no rhyme or reason that swayed us either way.  I can see benefits for both private and public and I haven’t ruled the private school out for the future.  It’s just all of us have been praying and waiting and I don’t think anyone feels an urgency for her to go to the private school.  And that’s that.

The next two weeks are going to be busy I believe.  This week the kids have summer camp at their preschool from 8:30-12:30 every day.  That will be FANTASTIC.  I know they miss school and I know I miss school.

Saturday the kids will be headed to our local baseball game with my SIL.

Next Sunday we leave for Myrtle Beach with Scott’s family for our annual beach trip.  That Friday is my big ‘ol 30th birthday I’ve been DREADING.  I am somewhat looking forward to it now though as Mom and Heather booked us rooms in Wilmington, NC for Friday and Saturday night.  We plan to tour the set and look at a bunch of the filming locations.  Hopefully somewhere in there will be a GRAND birthday dinner.

The patches so far are holding up.  The pool is still filling up but is almost done.  Looks like it’s temporarily going to work.  The big test will be when the weather clears and we get back in!

Yesterday we (Mom, Dad and me) finally got serious about getting our pool clean.  Our water was finally clean but it exposed A LOT of dirt and a little bit of algae at the bottom.  We spent the better part of our pool time yesterday vacuuming and brushing and wiping.  We needed chemicals but our pool store was closed on the 4th.  I took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese’s last night and there just happened to be an open pool store on the way so I stopped there on the way home.  We had a cookout with his family last night and when everyone was done swimming we dumped the chemicals in hoping FINALLY we’d have a perfectly clean pool.

Well.

I woke up this morning and rushed out to the pool and hoped to see a clean pool and was greeted with a pool with A LOT less water than it had last night. It was probably to the bottom of the skimmer line.  I made a quick trip around the pool to find a big puddle of water under the deck and in part of the yard. 

That began the calls to Mom and Dad trying to figure out if the dog might have done it yesterday, how to find a leak and how to fix a leak.  Dad recommended to wait until the pool quit leaking and then the hole would be at the water line.  Mom came over and was able to find a guy in the yellow pages that fixes leaks. 

$150 to find and fix the leak.  Gosh, I hate this pool right now.

Dad came over and thank goodness found the leak.  The problem?  It was on the bottom of the pool.  We couldn’t wait until it stopped leaking to fix it!  We made a quick call to the pool-leak-fix-it-guy and he said $50 to come patch.  Great.

So the guy gets here.  The pool has 3" metal thingies underneath the floor to hold up the sides.  Well, the sand had worn away and the metal was right against the liner.  It had finally worn through it and had created the gash right at the edge of the metal for a few inches.  Water was pouring out pretty fast.  He patches the one side and says it’s good.  Scott says how about you patch the other side because it looks like it’s getting ready to bust too.  Well, I go inside and start cleaning again and Scott comes in and says "We have river in our yard.  Don’t go out there yet but there’s another hole." 

I think I literally started praying.  What else could go wrong??  Gosh, I hate this pool right now.

Apparently when he put the glue on the other side, it melted the liner and a huge hole opened up on that side.  The water was POURING out under the deck.  I think we lost another few inches of water from the pool in a few minutes.  It was already going into the neighbor’s yard.

Scott gets his suit on a jumps in.  The guys sticks a sponge down in the hole. They get a bag of sand out from under the stairs and put that in the hole.  It was still going.  I call Mom and say "I think we just lost the pool."  And I really thought we had.  Meantime, the guy patches it about 4 more times and finally gets it stopped.

I go to Lowe’s and get some of that spray foam stuff to fill the hole from the outside of the pool that the washed away sand had caused.  Scott moved some sand back towards the pool hoping to give it some more support.

And here we are.  With our fingers crossed we haven’t lost our pool.  You might remember that we just got the pool last year from my parents’ old house and because of a run-in with Heather’s dog we bought this liner brand new last year.

I’m telling you, sometimes I just think we’re not supposed to have a pool.  But obviously it makes for some decent blog fodder.  Sometimes I feel like our pool is its own character around here. 

And without further adieu, here are pictures.

Here is our far down the water is now.  It was almost to to the top last night.

This is underneath the deck where it was coming out.  This WAS just grass.  Now all the sand is everywhere and you can see where he built the sand up against the pool.

And here is where the hole was.   This is looking down into the pool  You can see where the sand was washed out under it and it’s basically like a crater in the pool.    The vertical metal post you see is about 18 inches long.

The plan right now is to hope this holds up this year and empty and completely redo the pool next year.  We’ve been wanting to do that since we put it up as it didn’t go so well the first time but now I guess we have to.

I know it’s 1am on Friday and all but I had this post in my mind since I woke up and I don’t feel right going to sleep without posting it.

Appreciating Normal.

That’s what I’m thankful for today.  You know those days where you’re sick or something really wrong is going on and you just want normal back?  And then you get normal back and you don’t even think of it because, well, you feel normal.  Well, today I feel normal and I’m thankful.  Nothing hurts, I have no pain, no major issues.  Yes, life is busy and I have some frustrations but overall, I’m just…normal.  And I’m stopping to say it feels good.